All I ask for is honesty.  If this proposed rule change that will prevent catchers from blocking the plate and bar runners from running into the catcher all in the name of safety, then I will go along with it.  However, circumstances that started with the injury to San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey (pictured above) in 2011 have me thinking this isn’t about safety.

Why am I so skeptical?  The NFL earlier this year settled with former players in the amount of $700 million dollars for concussion related injuries that the players say the league was negligent in telling them about.  The same is happening with former NHL players suing their league for concussion related health problems.

My simple question to these former players would be this.  When this was your goal to play in either the NFL or the NHL.  Did you need a doctor to tell you that playing this sport, with the amount of hits to the head that were expected to happen, would cause you to have medical problems after you retired?

The answer I would expect from these players would be no.  Now I understand that money plays a big part with some people, but doesn’t common sense tell you that getting hit in the head for over a decade might affect you long after you’re done playing?  Players should be taken care of if they have long term health issues resulting from them playing in those types of sports, but would you consider baseball to be in the same class as football or hockey?

To me this is a preventative and reactionary move by baseball. Teams’ managers and front office personnel don’t want to see their investments (players) get hurt and if they can stop it somehow they would.  This is one way with the collisions at the plate.  Another is the realization that baseball could be sued by former players in the very near future for health issues relating to concussions.

That’s not what baseball wants you to think though.  This is all about player safety.  It has nothing to do with the bottom line or payroll.  If they would just be honest and tell it like it is then I could take this rule change at face value.

I don’t see a collision at the plate as much as some would like you to think, but it started to dwindle after Buster Posey’s injury. Managers started to tell their catchers to stop blocking the plate all together.  Why create a rule?  The culture has already changed to weed out the play altogether.  

If this rule isn’t implemented for the 2014 season, MLB said that it will by 2015.  We’ll see if the players union approves of it first.  We know how the owners and general managers feel about it, but if the players think that it needs to be taken out then so be it.  Their opinion matters most here.  Not someone looking at the gross income.